


rid of the monsters inside your head

by someonelsesheart



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bombing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, The Hale Fire, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 23:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1487497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someonelsesheart/pseuds/someonelsesheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing his mother ever says to him, skin pallid, hands weakly clutching his, is this:</p><p>“Stiles, you need to wake up.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	rid of the monsters inside your head

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Lauren Aquilina's song "King".

 The last thing his mother ever says to him, skin pallid, hands weakly clutching his, is this:

“Stiles, you need to wake up.”

*

Stiles Stilinski is nineteen years old. He lives in an apartment with his father and the empty space where his mother used to be. He lives in New York. His favourite food is Chinese food. His favourite colour is green. He goes to Columbia University. He has a girlfriend named Lydia Martin.

The first day back at Columbia, Lydia gets shot.

Through the chest, blood seeping, blood _everywhere_. There is no shooter, the bullet comes from nowhere, nobody even _notices,_ and everything goes on as normal even as he’s clutching his girlfriend as she dies in his arms.

That night when he gets home he says, “Dad, Lydia – today, she –”

His dad says, “Who’s Lydia?”

*

There is a park near his house where he runs in the early morning. He’s always been a morning person, and he loves the strain of his muscles as he runs. He’s trying out for the basketball team this semester and he wants to be ready. He tries to get Lydia out of his head.

Lydia. Who’s Lydia?

He doesn’t know anybody called Lydia.

When he sits to have a drink, a young man comes and sits on the bench beside him. He’s beautiful, with a jaw line to kill for and sharp green knowing eyes. “Do you ever wonder,” he says gruffly, “if this isn’t real?”

Stiles stares at him. “Sorry?”

“You heard me. Do you ever feel like this – this reality, this life – isn’t real?”

“No, I can’t say that’s ever occurred to me.”

“It will,” says the man, and then he’s gone.

*

He skips college one day and drives and drives for hours, then days. Two days later he finds himself at a small, cosy town. The sign to his left says BEACON HILLS.

He walks around aimlessly for hours. He lingers outside the vet’s, and then continues, scolding himself. What’s he doing? What is he trying to accomplish here?

He grabs a coffee and a chocolate chip muffin at the local coffee shop, sits down and checks his phone. No messages from his dad. That’s strange; usually he would be frantic by now, wondering where his only son has gone.

He looks up from his coffee. There’s a young man about his age watching him, a dark-haired woman talking quietly to him. Stiles raises an eyebrow, and there’s one word in his head: _Scott._

He doesn’t know a Scott. He doesn’t know this man.

Still, as he leaves the coffee shop, he swears he hears the woman say softly, "Scott, let him go."

*

It _does_ begin to occur to Stiles – slowly, carefully, like an idea you consider without really considering, like a promise you can’t remember how to keep.

*

When he gets back to the apartment, he finds out the reason his dad hasn’t texted.

He’s lying on the floor, hands draped over an open wound, the smell of rotting flesh present in the room.

Dead.

*

He doesn’t leave the apartment for a week. When he calls the police, they call it a prank call.

“Nobody by the name of John Stilinski exists,” they say.

*

They start to talk about war. Nuclear war. A bomb’s going to be dropped, they say, it just depends which side steps up first. Columbia is closed.

He goes to the park and sits on the bench, watches the ducks waddle in and out of the lake, oblivious. All around him sirens wail. _Go back to your homes; retreat to bomb shelters if possible. This is an urgent message. This is not a practice._

“Have you realised it yet?” asks the man.

Stiles just stares at the ducks. The stupid freakin’ ducks, not having a clue what’s going on, unable to understand the severity of the situation. Living in their little worlds. “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe.” They’re quiet for a moment. “What’s your name?”

“Derek. Derek Hale.”

“Stiles Stilinski. Are _you_ real?”

Derek looks down at his hands. “I don’t know.”

“Me either.”

Instead of going to the bomb shelters, Derek hotwires a car – “don’t even ask, Stilinski” – and they leave. They drive for hours and hours and Stiles tries not to flinch from the planes flying above them.

Around midnight, they drop the bomb.

The city is just a plume of smoke in the distance.

“If this isn’t real,” says Stiles, “shouldn’t we have stayed? Maybe we’d wake up somewhere else, like, y’know, like in Inception. Or whatever.”

“I think that when we die,” Derek says, “we die for good.”

Stiles doesn’t really know what to say to that.

*

They stop only for food and gas. Stiles asks where Derek’s getting his money, and Derek says, “I just think hard enough.”

“You mean you _imagine_ up our money?”

“Our?”

“Well, it’s you and me now, isn’t it? It’s our money. Our car. Our fucked up non-reality. Hey.” He has a thought. “Do you think my mom’s alive in reality?”

Derek murmurs, “I wonder if my family’s alive.”

“I hope they are.”

“I hope your mom is, too.”

Stiles is quiet. “You ever see somebody you think you know in reality? Like, an old friend or whatever? But then something says _no, no, you don’t know this person,_ and you forget. How many people d’you think I’ve forgotten? Hey, do you think I used to know my dad, in this non-reality?”

Derek looks sad. “Your dad died, Stiles. You told me in New York.”

Stiles looks down at his hands. He has blood underneath a fingernail. He doesn’t know if it’s his or Derek’s or somebody else’s or even if it belongs to the dad he doesn’t remember. Derek pretends not to see his tears, and Stiles pretends they’re not there at all.

*

They leave a trail of destroyed desperate cities and towns behind them.

“The bombs are following us,” Stiles realises, and the look on Derek’s face says that he knows. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you that somebody’s trying to kill us off? On a _mass_ scale?”

“I thought we trusted each other.”

“I do trust you. More than anything. I thought –” Derek’s voice is hoarse, and they’ve only known each other for a few months, only been on the road for a few weeks, but it's _natural,_ and there’s a twisting in Stiles’ gut. “I thought I was protecting you.”

“You don’t need to protect me.”

“I know. I know that now.”

“Do you think one day –” Stiles breaks off. “D’you think one day, we’ll be okay again?”

“You mean like, back in reality?”

“I mean what I said.”

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

Stiles looks at Derek, at the twist of his mouth, the set of his shoulders. And he aches, he _burns,_ for him. He leans forward and kisses him, a brief peck that glances off the corner of his mouth.

For a moment he freezes, scared that Derek will reject him, and then Derek turns his face with a small smile and kisses Stiles properly, and this. _This_ is real.

*

They end up in Beacon Hills, because of course.

He sees Scott. And Allison. And Derek points out others – Boyd, Erica, Isaac. They forget the names almost as quickly as they remember them, but then they remember them again and. Scott just watches Stiles, leaving every time Stiles tries to approach.

Tired of this, Stiles chases after him.

“You have to leave,” he says, desperate. “They’re going to destroy this place! They’re going to burn it to the ground.”

Scott looks sad. “I know. And that’s why I have to stay. I’m sorry, Stiles. You need to go. You need to wake up.”

And then he’s gone.

They leave an hour later, the car packed up with food and supplies. On the radio they hear about the destruction of the small town of Beacon Hills, how nothing remains. _Why would they target such an insignificant little town_? asks the newsreader, and Stiles thinks _hey. That’s_ my _insignificant little town._

“You think we know each other in reality?” asks Stiles eventually.

Derek shakes his head. “I don’t know. Stiles, listen–”

“Hey, do you hear that?”

Derek stops the car and they listen. It almost sounds like – like –

“Planes,” Derek says, eyes wide, and they drive for their lives.

(In the end, they can’t outrun the planes. Of course they can’t. The bombs drop, and Stiles screams and screams and screams.)

*

“Clear!”

His chest convulses. Electric, burning, everything hurts. Derek, is Derek okay? Can he – He clings just barely to consciousness, every nerve screaming.

“Clear!”

He cries out. _Derek,_ he tries to say, but it just sounds like a scream.

“Clear!”

*

He wakes up.

*

_Derek._

*

Scott is sitting at this bedside, looking so, so tired. When he sees Stiles open his eyes it’s like the sun has come out. “Stiles? _Stiles_?”

Stiles blinks. “Scott,” he rasps, and then Scott is hugging him, too tight but he doesn’t care, it doesn’t _matter._

“I thought you were dead, Stiles, _we_ thought you were dead,” Scott is saying. "Do you remember - there was this rogue werewolf and he went mad, attacked you - we got him in the end but _you._ Oh my God, Stiles, I honestly thought..."

Stiles is only half-listening. His limbs feel too heavy. "I had the weirdest--vision, dream, thing. I thought..." He trails off. "I thought I met--Derek Hale."

Scott looks at him like he's crazy. "Derek Hale died three years ago in the Hale fire, Stiles."

It hurts like a palpable thing, knowing it wasn't real, couldn't have been, and yet it had _felt_ real. It had felt so real. He lies back in the hospital bed and concentrates on breathing, on staying alive, even when it hurts so much.

*

He gets visits from Lydia and Allison and Isaac and the others. His dad turns up and cries a lot. Stiles smiles for them, but the smile hurts his cheeks. When Allison ask what's wrong he can't work out the right way to say he's disappointed he ever woke up so he says he's fine, and he thinks she knows. She knows that he's lying, but she lets it go.

"It isn't uncommon to have dreamlike states when your body and mind are trying to protect themselves," says the hospital therapist when Stiles brings it up. "It wasn't real, Stiles. Do you understand that?"

*

He doesn't bring it up again after that.

*

A week later they let him out, and his dad fusses as he herds Stiles to the car, and Stiles tries to breathe.

As they drive away, he swears he sees the outline of a man in the dying light of the parking lot, but he blinks and in a split second it's gone.

A trick of the light.

 


End file.
